Is androstadienone a putative human pheromone?

On the basis of different evidences, androstadienone, a steroid compound produced in the armpit, has been proposed as a human pheromone, although its physiological levels appear too low to induce a response under experimental conditions. For this reason, the majority of researchers in this area puts into question the "legitimacy" of androstadienone, and prefers to consider the axillary extracts in its entirety, like a sort of "medicinal tea", the components of which still remain to be identified, but that taken together may induce a response, or function as a carrier of other active substances. Another option is that androstadienone acts with varying degrees of potency and, at lower concentrations, according to the context and to specific behavioral situations. The aim of this paper is to review all relevant data regarding androstadienone, in order to ascertain whether it may be considered a physiological pheromone and, as such, a possible target of future modulators of some human behaviors. PMID: 21291365 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]